Faster Horses and Better Candles

Why are innovation days important? They are important because they provide the blank slate to play around with those cool ideas in your head without the rules and regulations that come with typical projects.  I am not saying that typical projects aren't filled with innovative ideas that each of bring to the table (because they definitely are!), rather that project goals, timelines, and budgets provide a lot of guardrails that limit the room available for completely those blockbuster innovations that really change the game.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - Henry Ford

 "The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles." - Oren Harari

Henry Ford's quote is one many of you may have heard before, and obviously refers to the innovation known as the automobile.  This quote explains his thoughts on how the idea of the car is not one you would get from asking stakeholders what they want, rather it comes from thinking about things differently and presenting those ideas as alternative options to what folks say they want.  Arguably, the automobile meets the needs of what folks who wanted faster horses were after, plus a lot more.

Oren Harari's quote is one that isn't nearly as well known, but does a good job of explaining how being too focused on improving something may prevent you from seeing an alternative that will achieve the improvement plus a whole lot more.

 So whether it is a innovation day you participate in or simply ensuring you take a little time to daydream about radical alternatives, I'd encourage you to do that regularly.  In an example that may resonate a bit closer to him, Gmail was born from an innovation day at Google (they call it 20% time).

What are you going to rethink?



References:

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